Recipe

Discovering the grating disk on my food processor many years ago was a eureka moment for me—ten minutes later I was grating and then sautéing every vegetable I could put my hands on. Talk about convenient! Baking a whole sweet potato takes about an hour, but sautéing the grated potato takes only fifteen minutes from start to finish—and you end up concentrating the flavor to boot. This recipe dresses up your potato with Southwestern ingredients, but there’s no reason not to go Asian (add ginger and soy) or Italian (add sage, brown butter, and pine nuts) as the mood strikes you. For that matter, you could swap out the sweet potato and use butternut squash instead.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

Prep time: 15 Minutes

Ingredients

2 large sweet potatoes (about 24 ounces total), peeled

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ to 1 chipotle in adobo sauce, finely chopped

¼ cup pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds)

Kosher salt and freshly milled black pepper

Directions

1. Coarsely grate the sweet potatoes, preferably using the grating disk of a food processor. (You should have about 5 cups.)

2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat until hot. Reduce the heat to medium-high; add the sweet potatoes and cumin and sauté, stirring constantly, until the potatoes are almost tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the chipotle, pepitas, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 2 minutes more or until the sweet potatoes are tender.